Provisional Irish Republican Army

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) was an Irish republican paramilitary organization that operated in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2005. The PIRA sought to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and protect the rights of Irish Catholics in the Protestant-majority region, and the PIRA was often known simply as the "Irish Republican Army" due to being a worthy successor. The "Bloody Sunday" massacre in Derry in 1971 resulted in the IRA launching an offensive against the British, and the IRA used both rural and urban guerrilla tactics against the British Army. During the 1980s, the IRA launched a bombing campaign on the British mainland, hoping to put political and economic pressure on the United Kingdom and force the British to consider a peace agreement. In July 1997, the Sinn Fein party was readmitted into peace talks, and the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended "The Troubles". The group laid down its arms in 2005, but the Real IRA and Continuity IRA continued low-level insurgencies against the British and Ulster authorities.